New Assets, New Thoughts, and All My Doubts and Loathing

Murilo has been working away at creating some new assets with which we may brighten up the world of Sprout. Interesting side-fact, in the original Design Doc, Sprout was written to be done in all pastel colors. In fact! I had even selected a base palette for the game, which you can see on the right.

Needless to say, Sprout's taken a bit more of a muted direction, and I think that's for the best. I don't exactly want to hammer people over the head with this idea that it's a hopeless world, but I probably also don't want them to think they're just playing a Rugrats adventure. Personally, I think that the current look of the game is far exceeding my hopes (let's not forget that I was about to do the art myself, which would have been disastrous.)

So, in any case, we want to really make the game feel immersive. To do that, something has to be done about the rather bland terrain makeup. While all the separate parts so far are, in my humble opinion, exceedingly gorgeous, they haven't quite come together into something with a beating heart. And that's been the current goal. Last night, Murilo sent over the first batch of new assets for me to toy around with.

So, as I get ready to expand the spectrum of colors and shades visible in the game, I'm also gearing up to really take a good long look at what the plan is. Sprout is a relatively slow-paced game that may take time to complete puzzles and rarely has you slaying enemies. A twitter thread I made earlier in the day asking about people's favorite side-scrollers came back with predictable and yet, somehow, surprising results. 

What makes a good game? Nice visuals, tight controls and fun combat. Thoughts: "Okay, so the first one is an easy check. Sprout looks good.

"And tight controls? Well, yeah, that's obvious. But wait- what are tight controls?! How do I know when I've got them?!" And thus begins the journey into the rabbit hole of doubt. But I think I may actually have this one figured out. Tight controls mean that you should never say "Ah, I didn't mean to do that," while you're playing a game. The mind, controller, and game should be 100% in sync. Right, so I can think of a couple areas in Sprout where that needs to be improved.

The the last one. "Combat. Uh oh. Sprout will have virtually no combat. But then, neither did Limbo. But maybe that was a once off? Also, is it fair to be comparing myself to the genuises behind Limbo? Will the gods of Indie Games punish me for my hubris? Should I shoe-horn some kind of combat system into the game? Maybe I can make it fit with the theme somehow." 

Of course, deep down, I know the answers to these questions. No, I should make the game the way I feel the game will work. Broad appeal can work, but it isn't what I'm doing. I'm making a game called Sprout. A muted little thoughtful piece on the struggle with depression and what to do if you find yourself alone and fighting an upward battle. The trick? Construct, not destruct.

Too Many Games and Sprout the Game

Those of you who follow along know that T-MODE was a great learning experience for me. Now that I'm gearing up for my second show, I feel much better prepared. This convention is quite a bit larger and with a focus solely on gaming, it'll be a much better fit for us.

With that said, here again comes all the brainstorming. I still have tons of pouches, so that's one less thing to worry about, but I need some way to decorate my table properly and make it attractive. Lots of people have suggested bringing in plants, but that means getting dirt all over my car and also having to be responsible for another living thing, which is probably going to end in tragedy.

So I do have some ideas about basically well cut pictures on poster board being propped up somehow, but it's all very vague.

Sprout's in Sweden! Twitter  @reo_swe

Meanwhile, reports keep coming in of our distant fans receiving their little Sprout packs in the mail! It was kind of a pain putting them all together (I have to use scissors, and as a person suffering from chronic left-handedness, that can be a real challenge!), but it feels absolutely great to see the pictures of them after their arrival. The one on the right went all the way to Sweden! Wow!

I wish there was more stuff I could put in there, but unfortunately I'm still just too darn poor! In the meantime, if you do decide that you want one, just email info@sproutthegame.com I will ship to just about anywhere.







Also! Perhaps even more exciting. Fan art! Wow! Thanks to Twitter's @laconiclelex for the 3d and @fight691 for the beautiful, BEAUTIFUL 2d.

Majesty

Grace

So, til next time. Don't forget, tell your friends. And tell them to tell their frends. We need your support!! Thanks everyone!

Too Many Games and IndieDB

Sprout the Game is now officially on IndieDB!

The week's been a pretty rough one with the day job giving me some serious hell as of late, but thanks to a lot of help from St1ka we managed to get the IndieDB page filled in enough to call completedish. 

I also managed to register for the near-Philly game convention TooManyGames, which I am pretty dang excited about. June 14th-16th. If you are in the Philadelphia area, be there! Seriously, come check us out.

So until then, Murilo, Matt and I are going to be busy as heck trying to get everything ready to show. We hope to have a full fledged first level ready to play, set inside some kind of stand-in plot. We'll see how that goes. 

Above is the original level design for Level 1, roughly sketched out. You can see a few similarities between this and the demo level we showed at T-MODE, but overall it's quite a bit different. I'll need to put in a fairly lengthy tutorial section before all this. 

Anyway, ask questions. Email us. Go to IndieDB. Tell your friends. Donate good-vibes.

Thanks for following. 

Sprout the Game's New Tune

New video shows some tightened controls and the latest music from Forte Sounds. I think what we'll ultimately end up doing is having several tracks cycle periodically through a level to prevent repetition. While the game has a number of similarities to Mario, being stuck on a puzzle and having to listen to the Mario theme for an hour straight probably wouldn't be fun to anyone.

So there ya have it. Please comment, share, +1, and send your questions to info@sproutthegame.com

The Convention Recap- Sprout the Game

As many of you know, this weekend I attended my first convention of any kind. T-MODE is a very small convention that focuses heavily on anime with a section devoted to Indie Games. It's size was actually a large part of what was so appealing. Being my first time at one of these, I needed something relatively small where any mistakes I made would go relatively unnoticed.

And boy did I make mistakes.

Turns out I did need business cards. And speakers. Yeah, turns out the monitor I brought didn't have speakers.

In any case, the venue was what I might call a wing of the lobby level of a hotel just outside of DC. High ceilings, white walls, and lots of little offshoot meeting rooms allowed for a very event-heavy convention. The main hallway leading into our game area was packed full of vendors, a large portion of whom were selling posters, paintings, shirts, and other custom anime-friendly merchandise.

There were a lot of costumes around. Most of which I didn't recognize. I saw a very convincing Jack Sparrow and had a lengthy discussion with a well-dressed Phoenix Wright about his previously-released XBLIG game, Super Santa Slayer. Besides those two, I'm not sure I could name anymore.


Day 2 went far better. I had a better idea of what to bring. A nice photo print of a Sprout image, some business cards, an easy to read sheet describing the controls of the game. Not to mention all our little pouches.

And if you're wondering, they were  a hit. Was also weirdly gratifying to see people walking around munching on sunflower seeds.

So, since I know this is always the most fun thing to learn about, here's all the wonderful things that went wrong!

On day 1, I showed up to find out they had stuck me at a table with no access to power! So there I sat, awkwardly twiddling my thumbs and examining the labels on the back of my equipment as I did my best to appear busy. That lasted just about one hour, at which point an extension cord was brought which allowed myself and the other guy there, of YYR Games (who is a totally awesome guy, by the way!) to daisy-chain some power together. And then all was well. Once he booted up his game- the weirdly addicting Bungee Ferret Tossing - I began to notice the deafening silence of poor old Sprout. I had forgotten my speakers!

In any case, I'd gotten my act together by the following day. And that was the day, armed with a set of business cards, I began to make proper headway in the "making connections" gig. That meant talking to a few of the higher-ups at the super-big MAGFest, and getting to know the incredible talent behind this picture:

There were lots of other connections, too, but I'm running out of steam here and I still have a lot of work to do tonight.

So in any case, if you haven't yet seen it, here's a video of the demo of Sprout the Game we were showing over the weekend. See that stickiness? That's actually gone now. Woo!

Swag Prep and More

Remember last week's fiasco? I learned a valuable lesson from that. I hate ironing. Here's to a life of wrinkled shirts.

An army of pouches!

Turns out, though, I love stamping things!

 So the custom Stamp arrived at the door on late Tuesday afternoon and I immediately got to work stamping away at ~150 of these little drawstring pouches. It's weirdly fun. And surprisingly messy. Within minutes my fingertips were covered in ink (a few of you will be getting pretty smudged bags, sorry.) Several minutes later, so was my face and shirt and probably my hair because I'm a child and can't not touch everything all the time.

Authentic knee action. So punk-rock.

Next came the process of filling the bags up with sunflower seeds. See that massive bucket in the background? It's FILLED with sunflower seeds. So with a pair of scissors and a glass of whiskey, I set to work. Four pouches for one bag of sunflower seeds. Some people got skimped, some people hit the jackpot, baby. Such is life, I'm afraid.

A few hours of this for the past two nights has gotten me up to over 150 bags filled. Not bad! I have seventy left, which should be more than enough. Any extras will be mailed out to people who ask for them and who don't live in places that will be too expensive to deliver to. So, Martians are out of the running. With this sentence, I am trying to fill some extra space so my formatting doesn't look so weird here. I hope you guys enjoyed reading that sentence and this one following it that expresses the hope that you enjoyed it.



Finally, at the end of the night I collected by scattered display of finished bags and piled them together to make them look more orderly.

100+ here

If you want of these bags mailed to you, please let me know. Prerequisite is that you have to be following me on Twitter. 

As for the game? All but finished the demo level. Bad guys going in today. Fixing some jump mechanics. 

I need to get a medium sized TV somewhere to bring to this show. Getting super-mega nervous. 

Wish me luck!

Sprout the Game Major Crunch Time

Oh boy. Three days to go til T-MODE and we're not quite ready yet. The level itself is halfway finished, but we still need a climbing animation and an enemy movement animation. Things are seriously heating up.

Yesterday was spent driving around to all the Arts and Crafts stores in my area asking for 3 inch canvas pouches. Regardless of the employee or the store, all of them were fully incapable of understanding my request. One exchange went like this:

ME: Do you sell 3" canvas or cotton draw-string bags?
EMP: Like a tote bag?
ME: No, much smaller. Three inches wide.
EMP: Like to carry things?
ME: Yes. But very small.
EMP: You wanted a bag right?
ME: Yes.

All of them brought me over to the children's section where I was greeted with a rainbow selection of colorful child-size tote bags. "No," I would say, "not like this. Do you have anything smaller?" The answer in each store was no.

Of course, I knew it was a wrong answer since a friend had already told me they had them. So I just kept walking around until they presented themselves to me. Which they inevitably did. After I found them at the first store it was already too late to drive the 45 minutes to the next one to get them, so I started making phone calls to essentially "reserve" these tiny things.

So that's my evening. Pouch-shopping. Not to mention another late night perched in front of my glow-screen arranging assets into a level.

Meanwhile, Matt and Murilo have been slaving away at their own tasks. A new build going up today will give us collision polys on the tree tops and should make the game playable to non-English speaking computers. Hooray!

Murilo's been working away at an enemy animation. I had him lower the head in an effort to make it appear more menacing. Here they are side by side:

Looks weird without the headbob. Another
miscalculation by yours truly.

Before noticing the player, this is how
 the creature will walk.

For those keeping score at home, this enemy is supposed to be a kind of embodiment of guilt. I won't be explaining all the game's symbolism, but consider this a head-start.

T-MODE is just three freakin days away. Send us your good vibes!

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